Abstract : Most foreign policy observers agree that the end of the Cold War will require the United States to develop a new general foreign policy to take the place of containment. Containment policy served as the organizing concept for U.S. national security policy. It established a set of broad goals for the United States: deterring or, if necessary, defeating Soviet expansion. U.S. leaders used containment to explain and justify year to year and day to day decisions. The goals of containment also served as a reference point for planning within the government itself, and as the basis for policy debates in public arenas. So, in the Cold War, it was reasonable to assume that two nation-states, the United States and the Soviet Union, were the primary actors, and that they used the traditional resources of military, economic, and diplomatic power to implement their policies. This concept is no longer valid and thus cannot serve as the basis of a general foreign policy. This paper outlines an Alternate Candidate Paradigm for World Politics in the Post-Cold War Era.